Microsoft Azure Object Storage Considerations and Limitations

General Considerations and Limitations

Consider the following limitations:

• Data in an Azure container must be managed solely by Veeam Backup & Replication, including retention and data management. If you enable version-level WORM on the Azure container, make sure that you do NOT enable the default retention option. Enabling lifecycle rules is not supported, and may result in backup and restore failures.
• [For Microsoft Azure Blob storage] Veeam Backup & Replication does not support soft delete for blobs.
• [For Microsoft Azure Archive storage] Microsoft Azure has certain limits (quotas) on maximum amount of resources used. The quotas depend on the type of proxies you have selected. If you exhaust a quota, you will be unable to use Microsoft Azure Archive storage. For more information about Microsoft Azure quotas, see Microsoft Docs.
• Veeam Backup & Replication performs operations only on a blob level. You cannot create Azure containers or storage accounts from the backup infrastructure.
• Veeam Backup & Replication does not support object-level immutability and default immutability policies assigned to Azure storage accounts. You must set immutability for an Azure container where backed-up objects will reside. For more information, see Microsoft Docs.
• Veeam Backup & Replication supports all types of Azure Storage redundancy. For more information, see Microsoft Docs.

Azure Storage Access Tier Considerations

Veeam Backup & Replication supports multiple Azure Storage access tiers. The type of the Azure Storage access tier that Veeam Backup & Replication uses depends on the type of the Azure object storage:

• For Azure Blob Storage, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the access tier that you specify at the Container step of the New Object Storage wizard.Veeam Backup & Replication supports the following access tiers:

• Hot access tier: to store data that you access frequently.
• Cool access tier: to store data that you access infrequently.

• For Azure Archive Storage, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the access tier that you specify at the Access Tier step of the New Object Storage wizard.Veeam Backup & Replication supports the following access tiers:

• Cold access tier: to store data that you access infrequently.
• Archive access tier: to store data that you access rarely.

Immutability Limitations

Consider the following immutability limitations for Microsoft Azure Storage:

• Veeam Backup & Replication supports the Versioning feature for Microsoft Azure object storage for which immutability is enabled.

• Make sure that the Microsoft Azure Storage settings meet the following requirements when you configure an Azure storage account and an Azure container:

• When you create a storage account, make sure you enable versioning for blobs.
• When you create a storage account, do NOT enable version-level immutability. By default, this option is enabled and you must disable it. For more information, see Microsoft Docs.
• When you create a container, you must enable version-level immutability. For more information, see Microsoft Docs.
• The default retention is disabled. For more information on how to disable retention settings for Azure container, see Microsoft Docs.

• The default immutability policies are not supported.
• Do NOT enable immutability for already existing containers in the Azure portal. Otherwise, Veeam Backup & Replication will not be able to process these containers properly and it may result in data loss.

• Version-level immutability support for Azure storage accounts is not supported.

• [For backup jobs managed by Veeam Agent] You cannot back up data to Microsoft Azure object storage added in the direct connection mode.

• [For Veeam Cloud Connect] Microsoft Azure object storage cannot be used as a cloud repository in the direct connection mode.